by Mel Odom
Zhoh pressed his pistol against Sage’s faceshield. Shifting his weight to the side, Sage mostly dodged the first bullet and caused it to ricochet from him. The second one smashed into his helmet and set off another wave of alarms in the armor.
Boosting nanobots in bloodstream, the near-AI announced. Suturing chest and stomach wounds. Bullets will have to be removed later. Narco-suite—
“No!” Sage shouted. “Override! No painkillers! Keep my head clear!”
Unable to bring his rifle up, Sage released the weapon and levered an arm between Zhoh and himself. Several of the Phrenorian’s secondary arms grabbed Sage’s arm and attempted to pin it against his body. Sage’s blood covered both of them.
Zhoh threw himself to the side again and just barely avoided Jahup’s shot. The bullet plunged into the muddy ground only millimeters from Sage’s head.
Sage’s strength flagged as he fought to break Zhoh’s holds. He knew he was getting slower. He barely blocked Zhoh’s primaries as he bludgeoned Sage with them.
Bracing his feet against the ground, he put his weight and muscle into a short jab that connected with Zhoh’s cephalothorax, split the chitin there, and knocked him back. Blood sprayed from his damaged face.
Zhoh hissed and clicked in rage. He tried to bring his pistol around, but Sage blocked it with an arm, and caught it by the barrel. Zhoh fired and the round slapped into the mud. Before the pistol could be pulled back out of Sage’s hands, he ripped the weapon free of Zhoh’s grip.
Zhoh hammered one of his primaries down on Sage’s head and agony filled his vision. The faceshield fractured over Sage’s face and made seeing details more difficult. Pain became the bedrock of his world and the abyss of unconsciousness waited at the fringes.
Sage grabbed the claw as Zhoh drew it back up. He held on tightly while Zhoh pushed at him with his other primary. Concentrating, Sage used all his added strength to twist the primary. Cartilage popped and chitin cracked as the wrist tore, then the primary popped free.
A thin feeling of success threaded through Sage for an instant. He worked at bucking Zhoh off him, but the Phrenorian clung with all of his secondaries.
Zhoh opened his remaining primary and locked it around Sage’s helmet. He squeezed and the suit’s alarms screamed in warning. Sage’s head throbbed as the pressure increased.
“This is how it is, Master Sergeant,” Zhoh said. “That moment of death on the battlefield when you realize you’ve spent everything you have trying to vanquish your enemy—only to fail.”
Zhoh’s tail arced over his shoulder and stabbed into Sage’s chest armor. The sharp pain told him it had penetrated, and the agonizing burn—though it felt as if it was coming from a long way off—let him know he’d been envenomed.
The suit’s near-AI screamed something, but he couldn’t make out the warning.
He concentrated on his right arm as he reached down for the Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum. He curled his fingers around the pistol’s butt and fought to bring it up while the burning pain spread across his chest.
Zhoh realized what Sage was doing too late. The Magnum’s barrel shoved against the Phrenorian’s cephalothorax and he rolled the hammer back.
“I’m not going to be the first one to fail,” Sage promised.
He pulled the trigger and Zhoh shook with the impact as a crater opened up and evacuated soft tissue in a spray that briefly challenged the falling rain. Zhoh’s hold on him loosened.
Sage grabbed Zhoh’s tail and yanked it from his armor and his flesh. The burning caused by the poison continued, but he shoved the Phrenorian from him, rolled over to his side, and pushed himself up on his free hand. His knees were weak and his broken leg trembled even encased in the armor, but he made himself stand. He held the pistol at the ready.
Zhoh struggled to get to his feet, but failed. He had no strength left, and even that was fading.
“I pray we meet on another battlefield after this one,” Zhoh said. Blood covered him as his heart pumped it out. “Maybe . . . maybe if you had lost as much as I have . . . maybe you would see that you and I are more alike than you think. You revealed that the night you went looking for that confrontation with DawnStar.”
Guilt pinged Sage because he knew that might be true. He had gone there to draw out Velesko Kos, and he had deliberately hunted the criminal element on Makaum to stir up the action. He’d been looking for his own war all this time.
“You see it now, don’t you?” Zhoh’s voice was all but gone. “You see . . . how we are . . . the same. So nearly the . . . same. Goodbye, Genyard.”
The Phrenorian shivered and was still. Sage swayed on his feet, barely able to keep his balance. Pain felt distant, but only because there was so much of it.
Nearby, Jahup crawled off a Phrenorian. The younger man held a long-bladed knife in one hand and was covered from head to boots in mud and blood.
Two other Phrenorians lay twitching in the death throes. Jahup had had his hands full.
“Are you okay?” Sage asked.
“I am.” Jahup knelt and cleaned his blade with a fistful of grass, then returned the weapon to a sheath on his combat harness. “Zhoh?”
“Dead.”
Jahup reached down and picked up his Roley. Limping, obviously in pain, he approached Sage. “And how are you?”
Sage bent down to pick up his assault rifle, struggled through the spinning that cycled through his head, and straightened back up with difficulty.
“Still standing,” Sage answered. “As long as I can do that, I’ll be all right.”
Combatting Phrenorian venom. Administering Phrenorian anti-venom. Dumping reserve nanobots into bloodstream. Sutures holding. Resecuring broken femur.
Across the clearing, Leghef pushed herself to her feet. Jahup ran to her and they were joined by Telilu.
Noojin came out of the jungle and ran to the little family. They all embraced each other.
Kiwanuka strode out of the jungle holding the Yqueu sniper rifle. She looked complete and ready. She walked over to stand by Sage.
“You’ve certainly looked better, Master Sergeant,” she said.
Sage smiled through the broken faceshield. “Well, you’ve never looked better, Staff Sergeant Kiwanuka.”
“I’ll bet you say that to every soldier that’s saved your life.” Kiwanuka glanced up at the sky. “Colonel Halladay sent us a ride.”
Four jumpcopters flew in a diamond formation and hovered over the opening the Phrenorian airship had made in the canopy.
Sage realized his auditory enhancements were gone because he hadn’t heard the airships’ approach. “It’s a good thing the colonel’s not making us walk back. I don’t think I would make it.”
“You’d make it,” Kiwanuka said. “I’d carry you if I had to.”
“I appreciate that, Staff Sergeant.” Dizziness cascaded through Sage’s skull and he tried not to waver, but the suit wasn’t as responsive as it normally would have been. He was about to fall when Kiwanuka reached an arm around his waist and helped support him.
“I got you,” Kiwanuka said.
Sage wrapped an arm over her shoulders. “Maybe we could make it look like we have each other.” He smiled conspiratorially. “I don’t want the younger soldiers thinking I’m too hurt to do my job. If there’s any kind of a fort left, I have to help the colonel put it back together.”
Kiwanuka cleared her faceshield and smiled back at him. “There’s still a fort, Master Sergeant, and you’re just the soldier to put it back together.”
Sage hoped so.
EPILOGUE
Uncle Huang’s Noodle Shop
Seracho Street
New New Makaum Marketplace
1411 Hours Zulu Time
Sage sat at a table in the corner of Uncle Huang’s Noodle Shop and gazed through the transplas window at all the new construction taking place in the sprawl.
A Navy Seabee wearing a production powersuit walked slowly along an alley where strong defoliant had killed o
ut grass and trees only that morning. The yellowing leaves fluttered in the wind, popped free of the stems, and blew away.
Taking aim with his extrusion arm, the engineer pumped plascrete the color and consistency of bread dough into forms that sketched out a two-story building. His extrusion arm was connected to a large, industrial-grade crawler that carried a tank of ready-to-use plascrete.
Other crews worked throughout the city. The newly built spaceports, some of the first of the new construction, stayed busy with arriving shipments. The Alliance had been generous with the help.
Several Makaum and offworlder children stood in the street and watched in awe. Sage marveled at the sight. That street and alley had run with blood only two months ago. People had died there.
Yet now, after the Terran Navy Construction Battalions had arrived to aid in the rebuilding of the sprawl, picturing the area as a war zone was difficult.
They’d also extruded a prison early on, the first of its kind on the planet, to hold career criminals who had shown their colors during the invasion and the Makaum supporters of the Phrenorian Empire. Throzath was now a guest there. His case would be decided in a few weeks after the court system got squared away.
“What are you thinking?” Kiwanuka asked.
She sat across from him. Like him, she wore a newly minted AKTIVsuit. The Alliance had been quick to resupply the Terran military as well. Gilbride had gotten a number of specialists and surgeons added to his roster only days after the Phrenorian attack. People and the sprawl both were still being put back together.
“I’m just amazed,” Sage said.
“At what?” Kiwanuka lifted an eyebrow and looked innocent. “How quickly the Seabees can hose up a building?”
Sage smiled, and he realized it was easier to do that these days even though training the new recruits at the fort made for long, hard shifts. “No. I’ve seen that lots of places.”
“Then what?”
“How quickly the people come back after something like this.”
“You’ve seen that lots of places too.”
“I know,” Sage agreed. “And it never ceases to amaze me.” He looked out the window. “Especially the kids. They lose families, lose homes, get maimed and scarred for life, and everything’s still new to them. They’re always excited to see it.”
Out in the street, the kids talked and mimicked the extrusion suit operator’s ponderous stride and the way he held his arm out. Some of the other Seabees laughed at the kids. One of the Navy men reached into the truck and took out a bag. He called the kids over and passed out chocolate bars, which were still considered a delicacy.
Especially since they were free.
Eating the chocolate, the kids went back to watching as the building took shape.
“They’re kids,” Kiwanuka said, nodding at them. “The biggest part of any future we have. They’re why we do what we do.”
“All the fighting and killing?” Sage asked.
He had been haunted by more nightmares lately, but he thought they were a by-product of the meds he’d been given while Gilbride and the surgeons had put him back together. He’d dreamed more of Sombra de la Montaña those past few days as well, but he was pretty sure that was caused by Jahup, Noojin, Telilu, and Leghef coming to see him when he’d been in the med bay, and during the dinners they’d invited him to. He remembered his old family while he got used to the new one. Kiwanuka had gone with him to the dinners, and her presence had made those times more enjoyable.
“We don’t fight and kill,” Kiwanuka said. “Our job here is to preserve and protect. Don’t get that mixed up.”
“Kind of hard to do one without the other.”
“Have you fired a shot since we kicked the Phrenorians off Makaum?” Kiwanuka asked. “Other than in training?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
Sage nodded. “It’s hard to imagine it staying that way.”
Kiwanuka looked at him. “It can stay that way as long as you want it to, Master Sergeant. Colonel Halladay—excuse me—Brigadier General Halladay is planning on keeping you at Fort York as long as you will stay.”
Sage was surprised. “When did that promotion happen?”
“It didn’t. Not yet. But Bryce in the brigadier general’s office told me the paperwork had been put through the proper channels.”
Sage nodded. “Halladay is a fine officer. He deserves it.”
“Brigadier General Halladay also pushed through paperwork for me. I’m going to be a master sergeant.”
Sage smiled at her. “Congratulations, Master Sergeant Kiwanuka. You deserve it too.”
“Thank you.” Kiwanuka smiled. “He also has something planned for you. With Quass Leghef’s help.”
“No.”
Kiwanuka kept talking. “Sergeant Major of the Army—”
Sage shook his head. “No. They only give that title to soldiers who are going to be out of the service in a few years. And it goes to the oldest sergeant in the Terran military at the time. That’s not me.”
“Maybe you’re closer to being the oldest sergeant than you think you are.”
Sage mock-frowned at her. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here, Master Sergeant.”
Kiwanuka smiled. “Keep calling me that. I like the sound of it.”
“It gets old after a while.”
“I’ll let it.” Kiwanuka scooped up noodles with her chopsticks. “Anyway, Quass Leghef pointed out that you are the most senior sergeant on Makaum. She pushed the advancement with Halladay. They’re both confident it will go through.”
Sage didn’t comment. Leghef was a power cell when it came to getting her desired results.
“With the war moving out here,” Kiwanuka said, “Command is considering bumping Fort York up to a major training and recruiting facility. There’s room to expand here, put in barracks and family housing.”
“Sounds like they’re planning on turning Fort York into a big operation.”
“They are. And it will take someone who knows what he’s doing to run an operation like that.”
Sage considered the changes and realized he’d taken to training the new soldiers more than he’d thought he would. Those men and women knew they needed training to survive, and they knew the war was coming this way.
He’d come to Makaum looking for a war. Now the war was coming to him. It was a sobering thought.
“I’ll have to think about that,” he finally said.
“Planning on ducking out when the going gets tough, Master Sergeant?” Kiwanuka asked.
“They need to have the right person for that job,” he replied. “I’m not sure I’m it.”
“You are.” Kiwanuka reached across the table and put her hand on his. “You are. At the least, you can be that person until a better one comes along.” She grinned.
Sage nodded. “Maybe.”
They were silent for a moment and Kiwanuka took her hand back. He missed her touch. He’d grown used to it lately. They ate. Sage used his chopsticks to pick up more noodles. It was a dish he hadn’t tried before. Kiwanuka had suggested it.
“Do you know what you’re eating?” Kiwanuka asked.
“Luosifen,” he said. “You’re the one who suggested it.”
“It’s a traditional Chinese dish, a specialty of Liuzhou, a city in Guangxi in southern China. They make it out of river snails and pork bones and a bunch of herbs. Black cardamom, tangerine peel, licorice root, and other things I can’t remember.”
“River snails?” Sage looked for them in the noodles.
“Don’t tell me snails would be the worst thing you’ve ever eaten.”
“No.”
“There aren’t any snails in that dish,” Kiwanuka said. “Uncle Huang told me he substitutes jasulild for the snails and the pork bones.”
“If Pingasa had gotten eaten by one of those things, people might not order this for a while.”
Kiwanuka grinned. “He still tells that story to
everybody who will listen. Sometimes he buys beers so he can tell it again to people he already knows.”
Sage laughed, and it was a good sound, one that he didn’t recognize as his own. That surprised him and he thought maybe it was the imported beer they were drinking.
Out on the street, a crawler paused outside the safety margins imposed by the Seabees. Noojin sat behind the wheel in civilian dress and Jahup sat in the passenger seat. They held hands between them. After a moment, they rolled on.
“I guess they got their relationship worked out,” Sage observed.
Kiwanuka nodded. “Nearly losing someone will do that to you. They’re as happy as two young people can be. I helped them with their paperwork that would allow them to see each other while serving.” She looked up at Sage. “I was wondering if I should put in paperwork myself.”
Sage looked at her.
“We eat an awful lot of meals together these days, Master Sergeant, and we’ve been known to keep each other company late at night.”
Sage’s ears burned and he had to stop from laughing at himself and accidently hurting Kiwanuka’s feelings.
“Our togetherness has been noticed,” Kiwanuka went on. “With my promotion in the pipeline, I don’t want to mess things up. Plus, I’m happy with where we are. Maybe it’s time for you to figure out if you are.”
“I’m happy,” Sage said. And it was the first time he could say that truly in a long time. “Let me know when you want the paperwork to hit Halladay’s desk.”
“All right.”
Sage leaned across the table and kissed her, something that they hadn’t done in public. When he pulled away, Kiwanuka looked at him in surprise.
“People are going to talk,” she said.
Outside, the children had turned their attention from the construction site and were laughing and pointing at the two of them. They kept saying a word Sage didn’t understand.
“They already are,” Sage said, and nodded.
Kiwanuka pulled a face at the kids and they roared with laughter.
“What are they saying?” Sage asked.
“It’s a Makaum word that comes from some of their oldest history. It means ‘Warlord.’”
